Drowning in the Caribbean Sea

Yep. Bob Dylan said it best: "The times they are a-changing." Unfortunately, the politicians aren't.

Joan Gordon-Webley, former head of the National Solid Waste Management Authority, is wasting time peevishly complaining about her opponent, Damion Crawford, who dubbed her a "solid waste of time".

Crawford is also busy stirring up potentially perilous emotions with his untimely memorial service for Roy McGann (the constituency's candidate killed during the tumultuous 1980 campaign).

Ian Hayles is complaining about fertiliser distribution, of all things. And Generation 2000 is hard at work portraying the opposition leader as some sort of animal. The circus is in full swing.

Santa, Rudolph and company are a more serious set than the hapless bunch battling to run this country. At least Santa and the crew deliver the goods annually. Our politicians only steer us up a certain creek of excrement, without providing as much as a paddle - or swimming lessons.

Yep, the times are a-changing. The waters are raging. And nobody's teaching the Jamaican people how to swim. We can only tread water for so long before we sink in our own solid waste.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

A job is an amazing thing. A man's self-esteem and sense of purpose might be tied to his work. He brims with pride as he returns in the evenings to the home established by the sweat of his brow. A hard-working woman puts food on her family's table and clothes on their backs. She is empowered. Her family is enriched.

From humanity's dawning, God compelled man to work. He placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to tend to and protect it. Our desire to be employed, to produce, to provide is innate. It's no wonder that throughout the years, party manifestos and political platforms have perpetually pledged "jobs, jobs, jobs".

These promises are particularly pressing today. Nearly 100,000 Jamaicans have lost jobs in the past several years. The unemployment rate is officially 12 per cent, translating to hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Jamaicans. The figure doesn't include the several hundred thousand more who have given up seeking employment and are no longer counted in the official labour force. It also omits the thousands who are working for meagre wages and teeter at or below the poverty line. The IMF estimates 1.1 million Jamaicans live in poverty.

Thousands more live outside reality. Our Government is quick to remind us that our wretched economic condition is not unique. Tens of millions of jobs have been lost across the globe in this 'Great Recession'. But our leaders are not nearly as candid about the real state of Jamaica's future in the vast global economic ocean. Perhaps that truth is too terrifying.

The fact is, many of the jobs that have been lost will never return. Unlike previous downturns - products of ebbs and flows in the business cycle - the current recession marks a fundamental shift in the global economic landscape.

No longer can tiny, developing nations like ours rely on certain old-world sectors and domestic markets for growth and stability. If we are to survive these treacherous waters, we must diversify our economy and innovate. We are now in competition with the world.

Time to refocus our energies

We trumpet the successes of our athletes, as we should. But we must keep them in perspective. We need world-class software engineers more than track stars. We need to support fledgling, pioneering enterprises with the same zeal with which we support schoolboy football.

We wasted billions in ridiculous Ponzi schemes, yet lack a vibrant community of angel investors to fund early-stage start-ups. Financiers grew wealthy by parking capital in government paper, yet none have established serious venture-capital firms to invest in the companies that will create the jobs of the future.

We complain about dependence on imported fuel, yet we've made few legitimate efforts to promote renewable energy. Opportunities in biotechnology and creative industries lie unexploited. Tourism is in desperate need of revitalisation. And human capital - our greatest asset - remains underdeveloped.

Surely, Government must create an environment conducive to growth. But if we care to swim rather than sink, private citizens and enterprises must lead our charge into the future. If not, we're destined to drown in a cesspool of joblessness.

Din Duggan is an attorney working as a consultant with a global legal search firm. Email him at columns@gleanerjm.com or dinduggan@gmail.com, or view his past columns at facebook.com/dinduggan and twitter.com/YoungDuggan.